Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Josh Mankiewicz and Keith Morrison sit down to talk about Keith’s episode, “The Woman with No Name”. In 2006, two men out target shooting discovered the body of a woman in the woods of Kilgore, Texas. She had been murdered and her body had been set on fire. She had no ID and, despite their efforts, investigators were unable to identify her.  The case caught the eye of internet sleuths drawn to the unidentified woman in the lavender shirt who still had some of her baby teeth. She became known as “Lavender Doe”.  Members of an organization called the “DNA Doe Project” took up the cause and offered their help. Using genetic genealogy, they worked tirelessly to track down Lavender Doe’s family and give her back her name – Dana Lynn Dodd. Josh and Keith discuss the dedicated work of the DNA Doe Project and chat about the impact their fathers have had on their lives. Also, Dateline digital producer Veronica Mazaika shares details on some unsolved Doe cases Dateline has covered in our Cold Case Spotlight series. Plus, she asks Josh and Keith a question from a social media follower.Learn more about the John and Jane Doe cases covered in Dateline’s Cold Case Spotlight series :https://www.nbcnews.com/doe-casesSubmit unsolved cold cases to Dateline here: https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/have-story-share-dateline-submit-it-here-n1297196Watch Keith read Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”: https://youtu.be/Ty_V5h12RHw?si=Z2HeHerNGxz2qak8

Hi, it's Josh Mankiewicz, and we're talking Dateline today with Keith Morrison. Hi, Keith. Hello, Josh. So, this episode is called The Woman with No Name, and it's about the 2006 murder of an unidentified woman who was dubbed Lavender Doe because of the lavender shirt she was found in after she had been murdered. And an interesting team of people kind of banded together to help find her name, identify her. Now, if you have not listened to this episode yet, it's the one right below this one on the list of podcasts that you just

chose from. So you can go there and listen to it. Or if you want to watch it, you can stream it on Peacock and then come back here. Now when you come back Keith has an extra clip that he wants to play for us from his interview with the co-founder of the DNA Doe project and then later we're going to be joined by a Dateline producer Veronica Mazzaika to talk about what she's learned from her work reporting on other unsolved cases of Jane and John Doe. So stick around for that. Now let's talk Dateline. So, um, this was an unusual episode of Dateline. It unfolded differently than ones I'm used to, probably also ones the audience is used to.

It begins with something that usually doesn't come at the beginning of the episode, which is the finding of a body. Yeah. Usually we meet the victim before we… Usually we do. But in this case, we were unable to meet the victim. So tell us how this unfolds a little bit. Well, in this case, we met the victim when she was, her body was actually on fire, a really pretty awful

scene that a couple of hundreds came across, and they of course called it in. So the fire was put out, the body was taken to the morgue, and they tried to figure out who it was, and they had no idea. They did some DNA tests and discovered that she had sex of some kind in the recent past. So they were able to get a DNA profile from the semen. What do you know? It turned out to be an offender they knew pretty well. Pete Slauson The beginning, he has an alibi, right? They kind of look away from him originally.

Dr. Craig Slauson Yeah. Then they discover that his girlfriend is also missing and that the family is very worried about her and then... And that's too much of a coincidence. Right. And he finally confesses to both murders. But police genuinely believe that he doesn't know who she was. Well, he doesn't know who she was. He hasn't got a clue. It was some girl that he ran into outside a Walmart. And she doesn't match any missing persons reports from that jurisdiction.

John Correct. Yes, correct. This became in my mind, and it's one of the few stories I like to call my Horton, here's a who story, which is that, you know, a person's a person, no matter who. They deserve the same respect as, you know, the President of the United States. Anybody deserves respect, attention, and deserves to have whatever measure of justice can be afforded to them. Happily, a detective on this case, Eddie Hope, had that very opinion that everybody's in everybody and then these cases need to be solved for the sake of the person who's dead as much as for the family.

Darrell Bock One of the things I thought was interesting about this is that, you know, frequently when people from the outside contact police departments and say, I want to help you solve this case, the answer is, thanks. We got it. Like, we really don't need your help. And also, outsiders getting involved presents all kinds of other problems like evidence and chain of custody and I don't want you at the crime scene and you're not a law enforcement officer and you don't have any subpoena power.

All those things. There's lots of reasons why average citizens should not get involved in things like this. But in this case, Detective Hope was actually, he was like, yeah, let's go. Let's do this. He was very frustrated that he couldn't find out who she was to let people know. And that's when these DNA Doe Project people got involved. And DNA Doe is a fascinating organization where people use genetic genealogy to try to nail down who missing people are.

Pete Slauson Now, when this happened, that was quite new. Now it's something that we almost take for granted in criminal cases. Pete Slauson Yes. I was at a local event where I live not long ago and I heard about several cases that the local police department has solved with genetic genealogists just in the last year. So, it's becoming rather common. Pete Slauson It is and it's becoming so common that when we do these stories on Dateline now, it's only a little part of the story. But at this time, it was kind of the story. Pete It was the story.

Pete It really was groundbreaking. And it also shows you not just sort of what can be accomplished through science, but also sort of the dedication and fascination and obsession, almost, of the people who got involved because they didn't know her, they didn't know anything about her, they just wanted to know an answer. Pete And it's a web of people all around the country. And Detective Hope, he got right away what the possibilities were for this, not only the technology, but the cooperation. He met with these people, and at least he met with them virtually and began to trust them more and more as time went by.

Pete This is all information, the genetic information that they use to identify her. This is essentially what is done in numerous cases, both ones that you and I have covered and other people, usually done to identify killers. You have the killer's DNA, but it doesn't match anybody. So you look at the panoply of information that is available out there on commercial DNA websites to see whether you can find family members, and then you kind of work backwards from their, you know, third, fourth, fifth cousin. Dr. Kahn That's exactly right. It works exactly the same way, whether you're trying to solve it from one end of the puzzle or the other end. it's still a puzzle. And it still involves finding these family trees. And the family trees can

sometimes be very, very large with branches going out all over the place. So you have to follow along one branch until you hit a dead end, and then you try the other branch and you go down. It's a very time consuming, labor intensive process. If anybody wants to look at their own DNA on a site like 23andMe or Ancestry, you specifically check some box and say, I want to make sure that that is uploaded and available to other people and that way I'll be able to find, you know, cousins or relatives that I don't know about. And so that's what this was. This is information that people have chosen to make public about themselves. I'm sometimes surprised that people are prepared to put their

family trees out there, put their DNA online where other people can see what it is. It seems very personal to me. I'm not sure I'd do it. I did one of these once. And it says on there, by the way, like, get ready for when this comes because it may reveal things to you that you don't know. Pete Slauson I think personally, Josh, I've always suspected and you can confirm it from me now that you're from some different species altogether. Josh Birk And I have no pulse. That's exactly right. When I did it, by the time I did it, the Golden State Killer case had been solved. And so,

I just thought, well, I should do it for that reason. I wasn't actually looking forward to, you know, meeting any relatives that I hadn't met. But I did it just for the sort of law enforcement reason that every little bit of information helps. Like in cases like this and other murders that you and I have covered, it can make an enormous difference. Oh, indeed. yeah. Sure can. When we come back, we have an extra clip from the DNA Doe Project co-founder, Margaret Press. So one of the founders of this DNA Doe Project, is a fascinating woman I interviewed named Margaret

Press, whose background is as much literary as it is scientific. And she was, you know, she had intended to retire and instead she found herself getting involved with genetic genealogy, which was the kind of puzzle that she really thrived on. And then these other people joined in who are, they call themselves online sleuths. But there were lots of people all around this invisible web of, or beehive, they like to call it, of tens or hundreds or thousands of people all around the country who are fascinated by these cases,

who learn about missing people, and who join in the effort to try to figure out who they are. Pete Slauson We're going to listen to some more of Keith's interview with the DNA Doe Project co-founder, Margaret Press, and she's going to talk about what got her interested in the cases of people like Lavender Doe, Jane and John Doe cases. Jane So, I was starting to catch up on my mystery novel reading. And one of my favorite authors was Sue Grafton who wrote the alphabet series and I got up to Q is for Quarry and I opened it up in February 1st 2017 I remember the day and she had an afterward that was startling because she said, this is the first time I've based a story on a

real crime. There was a Jane Doe found in Lompoc, California in, I believe, 1968 who had been thrown into a quarry and never identified. She had written the book 15 years earlier and had actually paid to have the skeleton exhumed so that a facial reconstruction could be done from the skull and DNA could be collected. There was no hit because this Jane Doe had not previously been in the criminal justice system. So, I read this and had an immediate epiphany.

I've been helping adoptees find their birth parents. This is the same thing. If I can figure out Jane Doe's parents, we'll know who Jane Doe was. It's no different. Pete I actually remember that case in Lompoc, California because my grandfather used to live in Lompoc, yeah, in a trailer. Interesting guy. I love that she was inspired by Sue Grafton. My favorite of the Sue Grafton series, by the way, is K is for Keith. Pete Slauson I should think it would be, yeah. Pete Slauson Yeah, not a well-known novel, but underappreciated.

Pete Slauson Yeah, not a well-known novel, but underappreciated. Pete Lisner One of her best. Pete Slauson Yeah, underappreciated, let me just say. So it took 12 years to give Lavender Doe a proper name, even after her killer had confessed to killing her. Pete Lisner This was a particularly complicated one because she was kind of alone in the world and though a sister… Pete And that family was kind of fragmented. I mean, they were like, what, 27 cousins? Pete Exactly. And they kind of didn't know much about each other and the mother,

Lavender Doe's mother, was not with her as she was growing up and she stayed with a sister. Her relatives who were trying to get their own lives in order tried very hard to protect her. She was a kid who was naturally troubled given what she had been through already. My heart went out to this girl. She had had so many strikes against the possibility of her having a normal life, and she was entitled to one, I felt. She had a boyfriend who didn't work out well, and she had this and she had that, and eventually she wound up where these young people will be offered deals where they get into the back of a bus or a truck or something, and they go off to various towns around the country. And they're selling magazines.

And they're told that they're going to sell magazines on the street, and that this will earn them money, and they'll be able to, you know, get themselves launched on some other kind of career. They'll be, you'll be able to afford to go to school, you'll be able to afford an apartment if you just stick with us and sell magazines. And then this other guy comes along and she had one more guy who's throwing 10 bucks at her. And you know, can you really condemn her for

going along with them? And that's her killer. It's not her fault. And she, uh And she was killed. An awful way to die and a terrible way to be treated after she was dead. So it was a sad story, but one that the good part about it to me was that there are people who are so determined to get to the heart of humanity of these tales, to figure out who it was, to honor that person. And in the end, they did. They were able to put

her name on a grave marker. And they all, those people who took part in this search, the central ones, they all gathered in that little town in Texas at the cemetery and they had a ceremony for it. They had a funeral. And it really was a moving thing. Pete Slauson Yeah, no, I thought that was great. And I loved that the members of the Lavender Doe team had never met until after they had already given her her name back. What was that dynamic like between them when they're all three sitting there? It was like talking to three siblings. They filled in each other's sentences. So they had communicated enough for long enough that it was, they were very familiar with each

other. And they felt comfortable together. You could see it. It was quite a delightful thing to see. It makes the point that knowing someone, the definition of that is kind of changing, because they clearly did know each other. I mean, they'd communicated a lot, but it was all probably by email. Pete Slauson It was, or text message or whatever. But I mean, I almost feel like I know you and yet I've never seen you in person. I wouldn't same way. What you were able to uncover about Lavender Doe, real name, Dana Lynn Dodd, is that let's say her ID had been in her pocket at the time and they had been

able to identify her or her prints had been on file someplace or a DNA hit had come back. I don't get the feeling she would have had as many people at her funeral as there ended up being. No. It's true. And I guess you can spin all kinds of stories. I can, as you know, and I've said it to you repeatedly about my dad being a minister or preacher, but he could take that theme that you just talked about, how when we become committed to a person, they become important enough for us to travel across the country and be together and have a ceremony in honor of that person, which they deserve.

So, thus endeth the sermon for the day. Pete How, this is a little off topic, how often did your father sort of give you that kind of lesson? I mean, daily? Well, I… Annually, I mean? No, I had to go to his sermons at least twice a week, often more. Right. Yeah. Yes.

And did he say, I mean, I apologize in advance because I'm aware that I'm off topic here and that always makes you a little bit uncomfortable. But look... Pete Slauson You're also kind of an infidel, so I'm suspicious of you. Yeah. Pete Slauson I am. I meet every definition of an infidel.

But like, I mean, my own dad never said to me, you know, remember this son, like, here's a life lesson for you. He never said anything like that. Pete Slauson No, neither did he. Pete Slauson But he said, and all these years later, I remember him like he said him this morning. Pete Slauson Exactly. Yeah, precisely. No, I never got advice, personal advice from my dad. I just, I listened to his talks in front of other people. Pete Slauson I have to say, I mean, I'm not, I know you're not doing this for him, but it sounds to me like he would have loved this story,

because this was a story about… Pete Slauson Oh, exactly. Yes, precisely. Pete Slauson This was a story about people doing something for someone that they didn't know, that really did not benefit them. Pete Slauson I'm serious when I said at the beginning, I should go back and reread it to make sure I'm not misrepresenting the tale. But to me, But to me, my father's life could be boiled down to a many years long version of the Dr. Seuss story, Horton Hears the Who. And in many ways, that's the only story that a human being who wants to be an empathetic,

caring person needs to know. It's a great story. I advise you look it up. Do you know the story, Josh? Josh A. I mean, yes, that was not the Dr. Seuss book that I read the most. I was more a green eggs and ham guy. Pete Oh, yeah, there you go. Josh A. Okay, after the break, we're going to be joined by Dayland's digital producer,

Veronica Mazzaika, who is invaluable around here. She has been reporting on these kind of cases for years. Okay, we are now joined by our Dateline digital producer, Veronica Mazzaika. Hi, Vee. Your hair looks fabulous. You've had your hair done for Talking Dateline, I can tell. Yes. You look great.

Yeah, I knew I needed to get it done. Before we continue, I hear some noise from your end of the interview and that's because there's, what, some construction going on there? Amanda Mildner Yeah, unfortunately, they are doing construction outside my apartment building and it just started, so hopefully, they quiet down. Pete Slauson All right. We are going to just have to live with that. Pete Slauson That, by the way, is exactly the timing known to, intimately, Josh and me. Everybody at Dateline.

Every single time. The second I start to do an interview, there's a guy outside with a leaf blower or an airplane flies overhead. Of course. Yep. So, every week, the digital team, which you're part of, covers Unsolved Cold Cases for our online cold case spotlight series. And you've also worked on Missing in America with me. And a lot of those cases are John and Jane Doe's.

And so you maybe can talk a little bit about those cases and what it takes to cover them because it's really sort of not like doing other stories, is it? Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a different experience than when we have a family reach out to us about their missing loved one or their murdered loved one. Every single case we feature is sent to us by people who watch Dateline and interact with us on our social media. And the Jane and John Doe cases that we have featured have also been sent to us by people in our social communities. I've found that a lot of these Jane and John Doe's have some person out there that they've never crossed paths with that Jane or John Doe, but they have dedicated themselves and their lives

to this person that they don't know. Pete to be clear, we're not doing the genealogical investigation at Dateline. Lauren Correct. Pete You're reporting on these cases. Yes, that is correct. One of the things that is helpful in these cases is getting the sketches or the reconstructions or anything that has been created in these cases and getting that out to the public and using our platform to show these things to the general public.

And if you recognize this, please call is the goal of telling these stories. So, you know, Lavender Doe was known by that name because of the color of the shirt that she was wearing. Who's Penny Doe? Yeah. So Penny Doe is a Jane Doe that was found in Pennsylvania in July of 1990. And inside her pocket, each pocket was a penny. And so she was nicknamed Penny Doe. And there's not a lot of information out there about Penny Doe, but they believe this woman was between 20 and 40 years old. She had shoulder length, dark brown hair. Penny Doe's body

was found in a place called Monroe Township, which is in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. And they don't believe she's from there because they didn't have anyone missing from that area that matched the description of this Jane Doe. But also because they believe she came from a place that had fluoride in her water due to her teeth. When they did testing on it, they were able to tell that she didn't have any cavities and it just seemed like she had come from an area that had fluoride in their water at that time and that area did not. So it's now been 34 years since that Jane Doe was found. There are a lot of people in that town. I talked to a guy that worked at the newspaper there. I talked to the girl who found her, now all grown up.

And they all really want to give Penny Doe her name back. Pete Well, the town is invested in this still, after all these years. Kate Absolutely. Yeah. Pete That's impressive. Pete Tell me about paratrooper Doe, John Doe. So, paratrooper John Doe, he was actually found in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which this hits a little bit close to home for me because I actually grew up there. I have been exactly in the spot where his body was found.

He was found on Memorial Day weekend in 1984. His body was found floating in the water. I did speak to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and they said that his death was a drowning and that they did not suspect foul play. However, there is this woman who, she actually lives in New Jersey and back almost 10 years ago, she started an organization called Veteran Doe and I spoke with her. Her name's Amelia. And...

Pete Slauson That organization is just to identify this guy. Emily Goodman It's not just to identify him. She does work on any cases that seem to have a military connection. And I asked her why she was starting this, like what made her do that? And she said, you know, she had a bunch of military connection with her, in her family, the men in her family had all been in the military. And one of the things she was talking about was that because of the military connection, it should be relatively easy to find these people.

Pete That's the first thing I'm thinking is that there aren't that many paratroopers in the world. Anna Exactly. And so, she… Pete I mean, the Pentagon should be able to help you with that. Particularly, also, you know how old he is. Yes. So he was about 20 years old and he had brown hair and brown eyes. And the thing that she was telling me about that is very specific to this John Doe is that he has two tattoos specific to this John Doe is that he has two tattoos that she thinks might be the key to identifying this John Doe. One of them is a Pegasus with the phrase born to fly free. And the other is a skull with a beret that says US paratrooper. So she thinks that that

might be the easiest thing to identify him. Earlier this year was the 40th anniversary of his disappearance. And Amelia would really like to help bring him home and give him his name back, even though they don't suspect foul play in his case specifically. Pete Let's also talk a little bit about the Jane Seneca dough case, which the DNA Dough Project got involved in. Amelia Searson Yeah. So, Jane Seneca Doe is a case that the Dateline Digital team covered a couple years ago. The Jane Doe was found in October 1976 and she died of a single gunshot wound. She was found in Grundy County near Seneca, Illinois,

and that's how she got her name, Jane Seneca Doe. So a couple years back in 2018, the Grundy County, Illinois authorities, they began working with the DNA Doe project. And I actually spoke to the Grundy County Deputy Chief Coroner. His name is Brandon Johnson. And he was just stressing to me just how much investigative work went into actually identifying her, which they were able to finally do earlier this year, identified Jane Seneca-Dow as a woman named Joanne Vicki Smith. And he told me one of the things that was really difficult with this case was that she had actually been adopted. And so a lot of her family members on her family tree didn't even know that she existed, which

made it 10 times harder to solve this case. And so between the DNA Doe Project and the Grundy County, Illinois authorities, they were able to finally give her her name back. And anyone who's interested in these cases, they can read all about them. We're putting a link in the description of this podcast. Veronica, thank you. Good luck with the construction that's going on in your building. Thank you so much.

If you have cold cases that you think we should be looking at, you, the listener, you can send them to us on social at at DatelineN NBC, whatever social platform you're at. Laurenie D維nz Before I go though, I do have a question for you. Pete Slauson There's a question from social that you need to ask us? Laurenie D維nz Yes. We did get a question from a Jensen Peterson on Instagram. They said, sometimes when I listen to the podcast, it seems as though the writers have written the piece specifically for the voice and style of Keith, Josh, and Andrea. I listen to the podcast, it seems as though the writers have written the piece specifically for the voice and style of Keith, Josh, and Andrea.

I try to imagine another host saying those exact words, but it would be out of character for them. So are the episodes written specifically with each host's talents in mind? What a good question. Thanks, Jensen Peterson. Well, the answer is, the reason that those words sound appropriate

to each of us is that each of us actually writes those to some degree. Sure. Written by us or amended by us, sometimes I think of myself not so much as a writer as a rewrite man, because you stay up late at night and you take other people's copy and you revise it so that it comes out of your mouth the way you would say it. Generally, you can't do a six hour podcast or a two hour television program without some degree of collaboration with other people.

And by the way, like that's one of the huge changes for me from when I moved from being a daily reporter in local and network television to Dateline, which is when you're working on daily news stories. What goes on the air is almost 100% your own work, and a lot of times it's your first draft because you're doing the story in less than eight hours, maybe less than two hours.

So this is a much more, a longer process. It takes months to do these stories frequently, sometimes years, but I claim 100% responsibility for the words that come out of my mouth, and I know that Keith and Andrea and Dennis and Blaine do too. years, but I claim 100% responsibility for the words that come out of my mouth. And I know that Keith and Andrea and Dennis and Blaine do too. Good. All right. That is Talking Dateline for this week. Thanks, everybody, for listening to

us. And remember, if you have any questions for us about our stories or any cases that you think we should cover, you can reach out to us on social at at Dateline NBC, or you can send us an audio message for a chance to be featured in our next Talking Dateline NBC, or you can send us an audio message for a chance to be featured in our next Talking Dateline episode. And remember to listen to my all new podcast, which is called Deadly Mirage. The first three episodes are available to listen to now, or if you subscribe to Dateline Premium, you can listen to the first five episodes ad free wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks, everybody.

See you Fridays on podcasts. Thanks everybody. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.